Power Of Myth Quotes

When your mind is simply trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.

Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that’s what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you. When your mind is trapped by the image out there so that you never make the reference to yourself, you have misread the image.

Mythology is not a lie, mythology is poetry, it is metaphorical. It has been well said that mythology is the penultimate truth--penultimate because the ultimate cannot be put into words. It is beyond words. Beyond images, beyond that bounding rim of the Buddhist Wheel of Becoming. Mythology pitches the mind beyond that rim, to what can be known but not told.

I think it's important to live life with a knowledge of its mystery, and of your own mystery.

This is the power of myth: that we can experience invisible spiritual realities and truths greater than visible, material things in story form.

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don't know what was in the newspapers that morning a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.

What is a god? A god is a personification of a motivating power of a value system that functions in human life and in the universe.

We need myths that will identify the individual not with his local group but with the planet.

All religions are true but none are literal.

Where you stumble and fall, there you will find gold.

Myth is much more important and true than history. History is just journalism and you know how reliable that is.

I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I've never met an ordinary man, woman or child.

The inner world is the world of your requirements and your energies and your structure and your possibilities that meets the outer world. And the outer world is the field of your incarnation. That’s where you are. You’ve got to keep both going. As Novalis said, ‘The seat of the soul is there where the inner and outer worlds meet.

There's nothing militant about Jesus. I don't read anything like that in any of the gospels. Peter drew his sword and cut off the servant's ear, and Jesus said, "Put back thy sword, Peter." But Peter has had his sword out and at work ever since.

You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning, you don’t know who your friends are, you don’t know what you owe anybody, you don’t know what anybody owes to you. This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you may find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths.

Whether you call someone a hero or a monster is all relative to where the focus of your consciousness may be.

I don’t think there’s any such thing as male objectification

Sit in a room and read--and read and read. And read the right books by the right people. Your mind is brought onto that level, and you have a nice, mild, slow-burning rapture all the time.

Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.

The experience of Eternity right here and now, is the function of life.

We're not on our journey to save the world but to save ourselves. But in doing that you save the world. The influence of a vital person vitalizes.

Computers are like Old Testament gods; lots of rules and no mercy.

Life has no meaning. Each of us has meaning and we bring it to life. It is a waste to be asking the question when you are the answer.

When you follow your bliss, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you.

People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonance within our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive.

All the gods, all the heavens, all the hells, are within you.

Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain.

If you can see your path laid out in front of you step by step, you know it's not your path. Your own path you make with every step you take. That's why it's your path.

The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with Nature.

I don’t think there is any such thing as an ordinary mortal. Everybody has his own possibility of rapture in the experience of life. All he has to do is recognize it and then cultivate it and get going with it. I always feel uncomfortable when people speak about ordinary mortals because I’ve never met an ordinary man, woman, or child.

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.

Half the people in the world think that the metaphors of their religious traditions, for example, are facts. And the other half contends that they are not facts at all. As a result we have people who consider themselves believers because they accept metaphors as facts, and we have others who classify themselves as atheists because they think religious metaphors are lies.

Life is like arriving late for a movie, having to figure out what was going on without bothering everybody with a lot of questions, and then being unexpectedly called away before you find out how it ends.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

The demon that you can swallow gives you it’s power, and the greater life’s pain, the greater life’s reply.

Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again.

Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and door will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

If you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living... Follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

If you follow your bliss...the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living.

We're so engaged in doing things to achieve purposes of outer value that we forget the inner value, the rapture that is associated with being alive, is what it is all about.

Our life evokes our character and you find out more about yourself as you go on.

For we have not even to risk the adventure alone, for the heros of all time have gone before us.

Furthermore, we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; and where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world.

Is the system going to flatten you out and deny you your humanity, or are you going to be able to make use of the system to the attainment of human purposes?